


Since You've Been Gone

by rarelypoetic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, First Time, Fix-It, Human!Castiel - Freeform, M/M, Season 9, handjobs, post-8.23, s9 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:41:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarelypoetic/pseuds/rarelypoetic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Castiel talk out some of the bad blood between them and then have sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Since You've Been Gone

**Author's Note:**

> Very loosely based on some of the recent season 9 spoilers. Title inspired by Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" (hey, don't knock it). 
> 
> Warning: Dumb boys being dumb.

The angels fall. Cas becomes human, and he wanders. Sam and Dean travel the continental United States with a renewed sense of purpose, only this time they are looking for answers, and not so much leaving a trail of corpses in their path. Unfortunately, winding interstates and the endless, trawling farmland that flank it bear no answers to the Winchester’s many questions. The more they travel, the less they get accomplished, it seems. But life, as it is wont to do, goes on. 

For a little while, at least. 

Two months after the fall, Cas and Dean run into each other. It happens at a tiny convenience store in Ohio, where Dean is buying organic milk for Sam (who has recently decided that he's "allergic" all of the hormones in regular milk), and Cas is buying Cheerios. That’s it. He’s holding a value pack of multi-grain cheerios and standing around near the cash register like he doesn’t quite know what to do with it. Dean watches him from the aisles, occasionally darting out of sight when Castiel turns his head a little too far to the right or left. He spends ten minutes trying to psych himself up enough to go say hello. It’s atrocious; Dean feels like a blushing fool about to go reintroduce himself to his high school sweetheart.

After a long bout of contemplation, Dean ends up walking just within earshot and clearing his throat obnoxiously. When that doesn't work, he resorts to his arsenal of intelligent greetings and quickly decides that "Um," is at the top of the list.

Castiel turns on the spot, eyes already doing that squinty thing with his eyes like he's trying to work out a puzzle. His scruff has gotten thick and dirty, just as it had been in purgatory. He looks drawn, exhausted.

“Dean,” Castiel says gravely, but his peaked eyebrows and his parted mouth betray his surprise clear as day.

“I, uh-- fancy meeting you here.”

Not fancy. Fate.

Castiel makes a distorted little sound that was probably supposed to come out as a chuckle. He looks weary, but refreshingly human. Dean feels something that has been tight in his chest for a long time now loosen at the sight of him.

“Where have you been?” Dean asks, voice cracking on the last syllable. 

“Here, mostly. I spent some time in Nevada last month.”

Dean whistles and rocks back on his feet. He forgets about the milk in his hand and fumbles it for a moment before regaining his balance. “How’d you manage that?” he finally gets out.

“I ‘hitchhiked’. You’d be surprised by the generosity of strangers.”

“Yeah, well, not everyone out there is so nice. You gotta stay wary--” Dean's voice stutters to a halt at the unimpressed look Castiel is giving him. 

"I've been alive for several millennia, Dean. And for the most part, I've been able to take care of myself."

"I know. It's just--" Dean fishes for the right words and comes up empty. "You can never be too careful," he finished lamely.

Castiel looks at him with this wondering gaze for a long second, like he can’t understand how all of the random instances in the universe have coalesced to form this one moment. Like he’s looking straight through Dean and into a greater, unfathomable darkness. A few seconds pass, and Castiel’s face clears.

“Would you like to go someplace else, Dean?” Coming from anyone else, it would be a line. 

“Sure. But, uh, Sam and I haven’t gotten a room anywhere yet. Where are you staying?”

Cas smiles a small, humble smile. “Under a bridge,” he says.

“Under a... what?”

“There is bridge nearby where the local homeless reside. I have been staying there for quite some time.”

“Dude, you’re _homeless_?” Dean is probably more shocked than he has any right to be. But he can’t reconcile the image of the Angel Castiel, all grandeur and flamboyant entrances, with this earnest, unassuming man in front of him. An angel, homeless. Imagine that. 

“If it’s any consolation, I take shelter inside of an old bus.”

“Huh.” Dean blows out a breath of air. “Let’s go, then. If you don’t mind taking me there.” He wants to see Castiel’s home.

Castiel turns to back to the register without a word and has the old man there ring up his purchase. He pays for it in literal pennies. Dean tries not to let his mouth gape as Castiel patiently counts them out.

“Are you going to buy that milk?” Castiel asks over his shoulder. Dean stares down at the carton in his hands. It’ll spoil by the time he gets back to Sam.

“No,” Dean murmurs absently. He puts back the milk mechanically and follows Castiel out the door. 

“It’s only a mile out,” Castiel informs him. They walk in silence, and Dean makes sure he keeps enough of a distance that their hands don’t brush. 

When they get there, it’s almost dusk, and Dean can just barely make out the outlines of makeshift tents and mounds of trash. The stench is enough to make his eyes water, but he tries to cough as discreetly as possible into his forearm. He’s never been one for discretion, but Castiel is looking around like he’s almost proud of the place, and Dean doesn't want to make him think this is something to be ashamed of.

Castiel leads him the husk of a rusted school bus, yellow paint mostly brown and crusty with age. They go up the stairs carefully; there are two missing the middle, and Dean has to physically heave himself up (hey, he’s not as spry as he used to be). 

Inside, it’s devoid of life. A few empty tins litter the floor, along with various bits of newspaper and crushed glass. The place is a goddamn hazard on wheels. Castiel sits down in the frame of what used to be a padded bench. The metal is sparsely decorated with bits of foam and leather, with which Castiel seems to have arranged for himself a meager cushion. Dean sits down on the similarly bare seat across from him. They look at each other for a long moment; Dean is the one to break the stare.

“Why didn’t you call us?” Dean asks, trying to keep the worry and annoyance out of his tone. Castiel’s eyes go flat and hollow.

“I didn’t have a phone.” 

“You could’ve gone to a pay phone, Cas, you know that! We would have come gotten you.”

“Maybe I didn’t want that, Dean. I needed,” he stops, looking down at his lap in an all too human gesture, “I needed some time to myself. To figure things out.”

“You should have at least let us know you were all right,” Dean says quietly.

Castiel tilts his head just like he used to, the first sign that there’s anything of the old Cas left in him. “I’m sorry,” he says. Dean can read it in his face-- what he’d meant to say was _’I didn’t think you'd care so much.’_

“You know--” Dean chokes, has to pause. He breathes for a beat, and then tries again. “I told you already that I need you with me. We both do. Sam misses you.” _I miss you, you fucking idiot._

“Dean,” Castiel says, like a prayer. “This doesn’t mean that I’m going to go back with you.”

“ _What?_ Why?” Dean is picking furiously at the threads of the seat cushion now, shredding them to tiny, frayed pieces. He feels panic like an ice cold stone lodged in his gut. 

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Castiel elaborates. “I don’t want to...” he trails off, which is so unlike him that Dean can’t stand it.

Dean stands up abruptly, getting to his feet and kicking a tin into the far corner of the bus. He gets right into Castiel’s space, which is awkward because he’s still sitting, so Dean grabs him by the shoulders and backs him into one of the half-cracked windows. Though Dean knows in some distant corner of his mind that Castiel could easily push him away if he wanted to, he yields to his force like clay. “You don’t want to _what_?” Dean snarls. 

Castiel looks at him impassively, and does not say a word. Dean feels himself get angrier, and god, he just wants to rile him, wants to elicit a reaction, an emotion, _something_.

“Don’t want to _what_? _What_?” He pounds his fist against the metal frame and it rattles with the impact. He’s almost screaming now. It’s funny because Castiel’s the one backed into the wall, yet Dean feels like the one who’s trapped. He swings out his fist again, not even sure what the target is. Castiel is dead in the eyes now, but he catches Dean’s fists in his own and forcibly lowers them until they’re back at his sides. It’s probably more to stop Dean from hurting himself than it is to stop Dean from laying one on him. 

“I don’t want to hurt you again,” Castiel says, quiet but firm. Dean slumps like a deflated balloon, but the tension does not bleed out of his shoulders.

“I hate you,” Dean says, staring hard at the far wall. Castiel lets out a short breath, and Dean looks him straight in the eye. “I--” he can’t get it out again. The words are stuck in his throat like they’ve been super-glued there.

But then Castiel says,“I would expect nothing less,” like the dumb fucking martyr he always is. Dean slams his fists on either side of Cas’s head again, feeling the fight bleed back into him.

“You think-- you think I-- fuck!” And this is the part where Dean is sure he’s losing his mind, because he starts laughing. In fact, he goes into hysterics. He laughs so long and hard that he can’t breath, and there are tears on his face, and he’s leaning into Castiel, who looks honestly baffled. 

He raises a hand like he wants to pat Dean on the back but is afraid to do so. Afraid to touch him. Dean rests his breathless body against Castiel’s, tremors of laughter still bubbling out of his throat and into the open air. They stay like that for what feels like a very long time. Finally, Dean calms enough to speak.

“When they first fell,” he starts, voice broken from so much laughter, “I was on edge for weeks. I called everyone I could think of. I had Charlie look up every name in the book. Even got her to hack into some surveillance cameras for me. Nothing came up. After about a month, you still weren’t anywhere, and Sam was finding more and more weird things popping up, so we hit the road. Everywhere we went, y’know... I never really stopped looking. But I had almost accepted -- again -- that you were gone. Thought maybe you were dead or worse off, and since then it’s just been... Jesus, Cas, do you even know how much of a toll this takes on me?”

Castiel looks at him blankly, like Dean is speaking in the only language on earth that he hasn’t heard of. He looks like he doesn’t even believe him. 

“Castiel,” Dean says shakily, the name holding almost too much gravity, “you’re my best fucking friend, my brother, my family. And I don’t know what that means to you, man, but to me...”

Dean takes a long look at Castiel, at the dark bruises under his eyes, at the frown lines at the corners of his mouth, and finally at the deep, troubled furrow of his brow. He's a man now, and not for the first time Dean notices how he looks so, so tired. Weary and weathered, but for the first time in a long while, not without hope.

“It means that I’m not going to leave you behind,” Dean finishes. 

“I don’t deserve your absolution, Dean,” Castiel says slowly, like he’s drunk or dazed, “but I’m not going to pretend to be above accepting it.” 

Dean breathes. “Does that mean...?”

“If you want me with you, I will come,” Castiel clarifies. And it’s probably not permission, because Castiel has only been human for so long and there are still so many nuances he still doesn’t get, but Dean goes for it anyway, feels like he can't help it. The kiss is messy and mostly one-sided. Dean can feel the shock lancing through Castiel at the contact. 

Dean pulls away, but their lips stick for a moment. Castiel grips onto his biceps like a vice and keeps him firmly rooted. He lets his eyes fall closed and fits his face into the hollow of Dean’s throat. He breathes in until his lungs can’t hold anymore air, and then places an oddly tender kiss right at the dip of Dean’s collar bone. Dean makes a small, incredulous noise at the affection, swaying further into Castiel’s space. Castiel’s broad hands linger at Dean’s arms for a moment before they come up to cradle his jaw. “I never expected this,” he says, voice sounding far away. He looks at Dean likes he’s a precious thing, but Dean is having none of that. He presses his open mouth against Castiel’s again, and feels almost ashamed at the warmth that leaches through his bones when Castiel responds in kind. 

Their kissing is open-mouthed and wet, more like sharing each other’s air than anything else. But it’s intimate in a way that Dean has honestly never felt before, charged with static and other, inexplicable things that Dean has no name for. For all Dean’s been with a thousand people before, he has no frame of reference for this. He pushes closer to Cas, spreads his palms over the nape of Castiel’s neck, goes purely on instinct. 

Castiel is so _warm_ that Dean actually starts to sweat at every point of contact. His fingers slide on Castiel’s skin, so he draws them up and cards them through dark tangles of hair. Castiel, somehow, despite living in a dilapidated bus, does not smell bad. His scent is a little stale, but it carries odd traces of peppermint and what is possibly basil. Whatever it is, it’s _good_. 

Their kiss goes from exploratory and slow to desperate in under a minute. Dean slides a leg between Castiel’s thighs to get closer, and licks into Castiel’s mouth almost reverently, because he’s so warm and open there, too. Whatever he does, there’s this feeling like he can’t get close enough. 

“God, wanna,” Dean pauses, dragging his mouth away to press quick butterfly kisses all along Castiel’s jaw line. “Wanna do _everything_ with you, Cas.”

“Tell me,” Castiel rasps, tilting his head to the side so Dean can suck lush kisses into the skin of his neck. 

“M’gonna show you so much. Make you feel good. You want that?”

Castiel lets out an animal sound and undulates slowly against Dean’s body. “ _Yes_.”

Dean pries Castiel’s hand away from his face and presses it against it between his legs, where he’s hard and _aching_ through his pants. “Feel that?” Dean asks, kissing Castiel’s adam’s apple gently. He licks a straight path back to Castiel’s mouth, and the man jolts under him.

“Been so tense lately. Thinking about you all the time, wonderin’ if I’d ever even see you again. Think you could fuck it right out of me, Cas?” 

Castiel stills for a second, as if considering it, and then in one fluid movement he hooks his hands under Dean’s legs and lifts him up until they’re level with his waist. Dean gets the hint and hooks his calves around Castiel’s hips. He reverses their positions so that Dean is the one pressed into the wall of the bus. Dean lets his head fall back onto the cool window pane, feeling like someone lit a fire inside of his gut. 

Castiel shoves his hips into Dean’s in desperate little subconscious movements, and Dean thinks that’s answer enough. And christ, Dean’s already well on his way to needing a new pair of pants. He hasn’t been able to go off on a hair trigger like this since he was 16. This whole thing is making his fucking head spin. 

“Get ‘em off,” Dean pants out, bracing his forearms against the wall for leverage. He lifts his hips slightly and Castiel makes surprisingly quick work of the button and zipper on his jeans. He pulls them down so that they rest on the meaty part of his thighs, and then moves to unfasten the belt that holds up his ridiculous cargo pants. Dean has to stifle a laugh at how big they are on Cas, but the humor falls flat when those pants drop to reveal _skin_. 

“Jesus, Cas,” Dean breathes, “I thought you’d be a briefs kinda guy.” Not that Dean had put much thought into that particular prospect, but he has to admit that commando suits Castiel just as well.

Castiel’s thighs are lean and bowed with muscle, and Dean wants to run his hands over the ample curve of them until he learns the shape. Possibly more intriguing, though, is the thick hang of his cock between those thighs. It’s blood-heavy and almost too hot when Dean fits his hand around it. Castiel jerks under him, doe eyes going heavy-lidded beneath the weight of his contentedness. 

Castiel sways closer to Dean, but keeps his grip on him unyielding while he peels the elastic from Dean’s own dick so that it’s nestled securely under his balls. Castiel touches the taut skin of his head curiously, like a man learning to read braille. He skates his fingernails just along the slit. Dean makes a startled noise and jerks into the touch subconsciously. 

“I’ve wondered about you for so long, Dean,” Castiel says, managing to sound put-together as he presses the flat of his palm firmly into Dean’s cock. He feels out the warm skin there leisurely, and Dean honest to god thinks he might die here, with his dick out and his balls heavy as lead. 

“Curiosity is an inherent facet of the human mind, as you know. Angels were not meant to have that same unquenchable thirst for knowledge and experience.” Castiel slicks his hand with Dean’s viscous pre-come and uses it to ease a bit of the friction.

“But I...” Castiel trails his fingers down to Dean’s balls, rolls them gently and tugs just enough to make Dean choke. “...have always been a little different.”

“You saying you had the hots for me all this time?” Dean says on the tail end of whine. Castiel’s eyes crinkle fondly at the corners.

“I am trying to convey the fact that I have wanted to learn you like this for quite a while.”

Castiel pulls on Dean’s cock nice and steady now, and Dean forgets all about being flattered or even wondering about how long Castiel, as an angel, has wanted to touch his dick. And god, if that’s not blasphemous, Dean cannot think of anything else that is. 

“Lemme touch you,” Dean pleads petulantly. He’s happy to be taken care of like this, but watching Castiel’s cock bob up and down with each twist of his wrist is getting painful for the both of them. Dean feels like a man dying of thirst just at the sight and smell of him.

Castiel pulls his hand away reluctantly, and uses it instead to prop Dean up with his broad hands. He takes the opportunity to knead Dean’s ass, and to slowly drag him forward until there isn’t a sliver of space left between their hips. Dean takes a moment to breath; he feels oddly comforted by the warmth of Castiel’s cock, which rests lazily against his own, leaking all over the tip. 

Eventually, Dean takes the both of them into one rough-hewn hand, and jerks them together until pre-come slicks between them. Castiel’s forehead falls heavily forward onto his shoulder. Dean loops one arm around his neck, thumbing the top vertebrae there as he brings them both to the edge. Castiel keens into the meat of his shoulder, and Dean actually feels his stomach contract as he releases himself all over the bare stretch of skin that Dean’s flannel has lifted to reveal. 

Dean nearly knocks himself out, he comes so hard, wet and messy all over Cas’s t-shirt just from watching his stunned, blissed out expression. Afterwards, Castiel lets go of Dean and they slump to the floor at once, their strings cut. Dean grimaces when his ass hits the floor, having a brief and worrying thought about rusty nails and tetanus.

“Jesus,” he huffs, “you really got a grip on you.”

Castiel does not respond except to say, “Dean,” in a small, awed voice. Something occurs to Dean right then. 

“Hey, was that...” Dean clears his throat, averts his eyes. “Has anyone ever done that for you before?” 

“Daphne tried, once,” Castiel says, his eyes looking almost haunted. “I felt safe with her more than anything, but I didn’t harbor any sexual attraction towards her.”

“Dude.” Dean laughs. “I’m your first? How’s that for irony.” Dean’s amusement abruptly shutters at the look on Castiel’s face.

“Wait, you mean you’ve never gotten off before? At _all_?” Dean asks, feeling almost offended on Cas’s behalf. 

Castiel looks at him sternly and says, “It never struck me as matter of grave importance.”

“Oh,” Dean says. And that’s just sad. “We have so much to make up for.”


End file.
